Jin Y. Park is an assistant professor in the department of philosophy and religion at American University in Washington, D.C. She specializes in Buddhist philosophy; her doctoral dissertation was on Zen Buddhism and postmodern thought.

Janice Willis is a retired professor emerita of religion and social sciences at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn. She is the author of Dreaming Me: An African American Woman’s Spiritual Journey. Read an excerpt on Beliefnet.com. Willis has talked about her journey from the segregated, revival-preacher South to a Buddhist monastery in Nepal where she began to find peace.

Christopher S. Queen is a lecturer on the study of religion and dean of students for continuing education at Harvard University in Boston, where he teaches courses on Buddhism in America and Buddhism and social change. Read a June 18, 2004, interview he did with the Echo Chamber Project, in which he discusses Buddhism, war, peace and […]

Joseph Goldstein is co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Mass., where he is part of the IMS Guiding Teacher Council. He is the author of One Dharma: The Emerging Western Buddhism.

Jack Kornfield, a Buddhist monk, is founding teacher of the Insight Meditation Society and Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, Calif. Kornfield is the author of Buddha’s Little Instruction Book, After the Ecstasy, the Laundry: How the Heart Grows Wise on the Spiritual Path and other books on Buddhist life.

Read the transcript of a July 10, 2006, Pew Forum panel exploring the results of an international survey “focusing on Muslim and Western perceptions of each other and on the Muslim experience in Europe.” The panel, titled “Islam and the West: How Great a Divide?” featured Amaney Jamal, assistant professor in the department of politics at Princeton […]

Read the transcript of an April 27, 2006, Pew panel titled “Islam and the West: A Conversation with Bernard Lewis,” an interview with one of the leading scholars and critics of Islam.

Janet Gyatso is a specialist in Buddhist studies and author of multiple books, including Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet (2015).

See the 2006 International Religious Freedom Report from the U.S. State Department.